


is there anything i could do?

by quixotism_and_grief



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 00:52:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11886456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixotism_and_grief/pseuds/quixotism_and_grief
Summary: just to get some attention from you?-uhrmann, before.





	is there anything i could do?

the most prominent life-lesson that has been instilled in fukuda rei follows as such: the excuse ‘sorry, i’m too busy’ warrants no questions.  
the required response is: a polite laugh and a forgiving, “it’s fine, don’t worry about it. we’ll definitely catch up soon!”  
it doesn’t fix the fact that she’s perpetually left hanging. rather, it’s a cheap consolation that soothes the soul of the other, so they can go enjoy whatever they’d rather be doing with a clean conscience.  
rei still feels odd following that old song and dance with her own parents.  
  
“hey kanako, asuka! you guys are free tonight, right? there’s a cute new karaoke bar that’s opened downtown; we should definitely check it out!”  
rei pretends she hasn’t heard that, and also pretends that she hasn’t noticed sayuri pointedly stride right past her desk. a long-established routine. she instead pantomimes checking through her text messages. tries to look busy and unfazed and uninterested. the last one is from two weeks ago, and it reads:  
sorry, i’ll be staying late at work tonight. eat without me. – dad.  
she’s read it many, many times. her reply hasn’t been acknowledged.  
sayuri’s gotten a lot better at ignoring her these days too.  
  
mum’s asleep by the time rei gets home, and dad isn’t due back for hours. rei makes dinner for two and eats her portion in the company of the glossy women modelling unforgettably loud gyaru fashion, envying their recognisable faces and elegant names. she leaves her mum’s by her bedroom door and hopes she can will herself out of bed long enough to get to it.  
  
the karaoke bar was a blast; rei’s heard all about it before lunch.  
the décor is bright and modern, the snacks; light and tasty. the boys gathered in the next room over? the stuff of dreams.  
rei idly thinks that they must’ve been a bit more than that, quietly and inconspicuously eyeing the purpling hickey at the spot where sayuri’s ear meets her neck.  
sayuri excuses herself to the bathroom with a giggle that sounds kind of oddly detached, and is gone for half an hour before the others decide to go look for her. rei has long turned back to her lunch.  
  
_rei, do you wish to save your friend?_ chirrups a cheerful voice, just as the screaming starts from somewhere down the corridor.  
the classroom rapidly vacates. rei is left alone amongst a sea of empty desks and chairs and hurriedly overturned lunch boxes. a small white creature hops up onto her desk, and pushes her food out of the way. it clatters to the floor, and rice leaps out over the plastic.  
  
“my…friend?”  
  
the wail of sirens starts up a few blocks away, and draws nearer.  
  
_does she make a habit of slitting her wrists in the girls’ bathroom?_  
  
rei pushes away from her desk. her chair falls backwards with a loud clatter that resounds. when she peers around the corner of the doorframe, she sees two teachers straining to lift a limp bundle out of the bathroom and through the throng of morbidly curious kids. her feet drag two long trails of slick crimson.  
  
_if you make a contract with me and leave now, you could catch up with the witch who is responsible._  
  
rei turns and the thing is still sitting on her desk, eyeing her expectantly.  
  
_well? will you become a magical girl?_  
  
  
it registers somewhere, way at the back of rei’s mind, that she should feel bad about the immorality of her wish. when sayuri was waiting for the paramedics and bleeding out somewhere, rei was thinking about herself.  
in her own defence, she was offered the wish, so it’s reasonable enough that should use it for herself. but there’s something awfully twisted about wishing for popularity when an old friend is fairly close to dying, right?  
rei scrutinises the jewelled egg resting in her palm. it’s the pink of springtime lipstick, or soft sunrises. when she transforms, it’s into an outfit worthy of a double-spread; platform wedges and a skirt so short it’s bordering on scandalous. golden claws gleam brightly, set in the gauntlets that cover her from wrist-bone to mid-finger. she wears her soul gem like a choker, pushed deep into the softness of her neck. she admires herself in the window, ignoring the red and blue flashing lights in the courtyard. kyubey urgently reminds her that the witch is getting away.  
  
  
sayuri survives, but only just. rei hasn’t really thought about her that much though, because between kyubey and the shift in the focus of her classmates, she’s found herself delightfully smothered with all the attention she’s craved.  
  
“rei, i don’t know why i’ve never noticed before, but i love the way you do your hair! it looks so cute!” kanako coos, “it’s so stylish, what products do you use?”  
before rei can answer, asuka chimes in; “hey, are you wearing contact lenses? they suit you really well, now that i’m looking at you close up!”  
rei smiles and flutters her lashes playfully at them.  
  
her phone buzzes in her skirt pocket, and that’s common nowadays. friend-requests, invitations, aimless messages; her phone’s never silent. but when she fishes it out, and opens up the text, she’s kind of surprised; it’s from someone she hadn’t thought would bother.  
  
  
sayuri looks like a train-wreck. her skin is pallid, her hair is limp, and her eyes look so, so tired. the room’s washed out paint makes her look even sicker, but she smiles, albeit tiredly, when she spots rei.  
“hey, thanks so much for coming. i honestly didn’t think you would; nobody else has been in to see me…”  
she winces, and then tries to pretend she hadn’t. rei drags over a chair.  
  
“i wanted to…apologise to you. i…haven’t been the greatest friend to you in the past. after middle school, i didn’t do as much as i should’ve to keep in contact with you. i don’t expect you to ever forgive me, but i want to make it up to you.”  
  
rei knows that this apology is comprised of two-parts magic and one-part neglect by everyone else. in spite of that knowledge, it strikes a chord somewhere deep down. they are words that she had been desperately hoping to hear for years, after-all.  
  
“of course,” smiles rei, “we have a lot of lost time to make up for.”  
  
regardless of the elation she’d felt, she also doesn’t deny the satisfied squirming in her belly at the ashamed look in sayuri’s eyes.  
  
  
sayuri gets out of the hospital, but none of her classmates seem to care all that much. everybody’s much too concerned with how rei’s done her hair, or what her test scores are, or where she goes after school to even consider the girl who tried to kill herself two weeks ago. rei is her lifeline; the only one who keeps her from slipping deep into the black tides of high school irrelevancy. they both know it, and even though neither have ever verbally acknowledged it, it’s a fact that has rei drunk on her own ego. when kanako and asuka flank her each morning, and enter the room to a chorus of ‘good mornings’ and ‘hellos’, rei occasionally likes to put her foot down. she greets every single person extensively, as if she were a queen dripping in jewels and fame, and only after she has exhausted every possible route of conversation will she even acknowledge sayuri, with her hand raised and her mouth agape in a greeting cut short by a swift turn of her head.  
  
it’s not a healthy friendship, not in the slightest.  
rei is aware of that, but in her weaker moments, when she feels guilty, she remembers all the lunchtimes alone, all the after-school events from which she was excluded, all the times sayuri had ignored her texts and calls, back when the wounds were fresh, and she remembers that sayuri deserves this. deserves to feel even a dash of the loneliness she did.  
sayuri doesn’t look as happy as she used to now. but rei knows that her suicide attempt was borne of a kiss sown by a witch.  
  
she ignores kyubey’s warning, witches feed off of negative emotions, and leaves it to fester right next to the selfishness of her own wish. let it die. rei feels much better about herself.  
and that continues, for a while. the four of them go shopping, to lunch, to sing karaoke.  
afterwards, rei fights witches. she rips them to shreds, heedless of their eldritch screeches. her plans are her motivation—the movies on wednesday, hanging out at kanako’s house on friday, going to the pool next week.  
idly, she sometimes wonders if this was what her life was always supposed to be; surely, her wish has some grounds based in reality. she doesn’t like to consider the thought that all these people she’s so quick to call ‘friend’ wouldn’t have looked at her twice if not for her wish. but rei’s got a god-given talent for ignoring what she shouldn’t.  
  
  
for the first time in what feels like forever, rei’s door creaks open before she goes to sleep. her father stands, crowded and awkward, in the doorway.  
  
“hey, princess.” rei freezes. her dad lets out a shamefaced laugh at the look on her face, “i know. been a while since i last called you that, huh.”  
  
“it’s been a while since you last saw me.” rei mutters under her breath.  
  
“yeah, i know. you know how work is though—there’s always some new project springing up that needs to be taken care of.” dad sits at the foot of her bed and runs a hand through his hair. “it’s still no excuse though, is it,” he sighs.  
  
rei looks at her father, really takes a good look. right now, in the dim light, with his eyes turned downwards, he has the face of an honest man.  
but there is no way that his simple 9-5 office job requires him to work overtime to the point where she’s not even sure that he comes home anymore.  
  
kyubey is sitting on her desk, curled up in the small beam of light thrown by her lamp. he looks back at her, and his gaze cuts sharp. a silent reminder that now, there’s nothing in this world she has to fear. if she can effortlessly slice through screaming, otherworldly abominations armed with psychedelic weapons, her dad poses no threat.  
  
“so, i wanted to see how my favourite girl is doing, and—” it’s a wheedling, sickening tone. like he cares now, all of a sudden.  
  
“mum’s been leaving my school reports on dining room table for you, for about three years now.” she says bluntly. “have you read them?”  
  
“i…i didn’t even realise they were there.”  
  
“no? not even with my name at the top? not even when they’re right at your place at the table?”  
  
“ah…i’ve been so tired coming home that i guess i haven’t noticed them. i’ll go and read them, after this.”  
  
rei scoffs, a derisive, bitter sound. “right, easy as pie. you’ll have time to just catch up on my life, now that you’re ready. handy that it’s all there, waiting for you.”  
she can’t properly articulate the anger she feels, but what it is, is this; rei doesn’t like the fact that she’s been rendered little more than a project sitting in a pile on her father’s desk, waiting for him to acknowledge her briefly and then file her away with the rest. like he can just read some piece of shit that some teacher’s written about her and know everything there is to know.  
  
“look, i’m sorry, i get why you feel this way, really, i do.” dad’s starting to get angry; his brows are drawn down close to his eyes and his nostrils are beginning to flare. in the dark, he looks like a caricature of a bull, head down and primed to charge. “but you have to understand that this hasn’t been easy on me either. i’ve been doing my best to support this family, and damn it if i let you just completely gloss over that, because it’s inconvenient to your feelings!”  
  
“oh, right! support, of course! that’s what you’re doing when you leave mum here, home alone, all day. i definitely can’t gloss over all the support you give mum! i mean, it’s not like she can barely get out of bed!!”  
  
“right, support! because it’s not like her medication is expensive! and while we’re on the subject of ‘expensive’, good thing there’s someone working, because your school fees won’t pay themselves! good thing your pocket money comes straight from my wallet!” dad swells larger, his face gets redder, his voice booms louder.  
  
her soul gem, a small ring set on her third finger, is almost scalding her skin with the intensity of her anger at being yelled at. the injustice of being dismissed. her pride is stung, her bravado dying, so she wields her next words to cut deep and nasty. she is barely thinking when she screams, “yeah?! and i guess it’s a good thing that some young, ditzy secretary has your wallet to fall back on!! tell me, when you screw her, does she know that you’re married?!”  
  
dad goes silent. his purpling face has gone white as a sheet. he says nothing.  
“don’t lie to me. i don’t want to hear it anymore.” rei’s voice is quiet and thick with tears, and she’s ashamed that he won, he got to see just how deeply she was affected. so she rolls over and smothers her face in the pillow. her father sits there, frozen, for a while, before he wordlessly stands and switches off her lamp. kyubey watches him, completely unobserved, as he pulls the door shut, and plunges the room into darkness.  
rei stifles her sobs and drifts into an oppressive, dreamless sleep. kyubey says nothing.  
  
  
a new text that morning, from sayuri, and it reads;  
‘we need to talk. meet me on the roof before school.’ rei would’ve laughed at the image of sayuri as a disgruntled and upset girlfriend. but acknowledging that would make her the equivalent of the lying, cheating boyfriend and so she promptly drops that thought.  
her excuse to kanako and asuka is that her dad is going to drop her off at school, and that’s why she won’t be walking with them. she shivers in revulsion as she sends that, and goes to meet sayuri.  
her eyes are stony and her jaw is set in a grim line. her lips are pressed so firmly together that they’ve turned white.  
“thanks for coming,” she says, “with you, i never know when you’ll bother.”  
  
“sure.” says rei dismissively, and that seems to set something in sayuri off.  
  
“listen, i’ve been wanting to call you out on this for a long time. you don’t really care about me, do you?”  
  
“what do you mean by that?” rei says airily, but beneath the uncaring façade, her hackles are up. she knows exactly what sayuri means, and is daring her to say it.  
  
“what i mean is, wherever you can, you’ll choose anyone else over me. group projects, hanging out, whatever. i get that we haven’t had the smoothest relationship, but i thought that we were past it. i was really impressed with how mature you seemed at the hospital, and i wanted to make up for what happened. but i guess you’re just a really good liar.”  
  
rei is seized by the sudden urge to laugh again. she can’t supress it, and a mad, howling laugh rips from her throat. sayuri’s face jumps in shock at the sound, as rei doubles over to catch her breath.  
“oh, i’m the really good liar, am i? that’s really rich, honey, coming from you.” rei pretends to wipe a stray tear from her eye. “hey, do you remember how long ago we met?”  
  
sayuri’s eyes are wary, “yeah. we were like five, or so.”  
  
“i’m thinking that’s a reaaaal long time,” rei drawls. she strolls lazily towards sayuri, and begins to circle her like a shark. “man, we did everything together, didn’t we? played the same games, read the same books, wore the same clothes. we even promised to be roommates, once we were older and living in our own place! i wonder what changed since then—oh wait! that’s right!! you dropped me the second we reached middle school! what did they say to you? oh yes, i remember, it was something like ‘god, why do you hang out with a loser like her?’ and what was it you said again?” rei leans right into sayuri’s face, teeth bared. sayuri’s gone white with horror.  
  
“go on. what was it you said?”  
  
“i. i said i didn’t know either!” sayuri steadies her voice, “and i still don’t now! we were meant to be friends! we did so much together, so why is it that that doesn’t seem to mean anything to you?! you just ditch me whenever you fucking feel like it!”  
  
rei laughs again, a horrible choked sound, and grabs sayuri’s shoulders. hard. her nails dig into soft skin through her shirt.  
  
“hey, do you know what that reminds me of? the fact that you were supposed to be there for me, but when it all got too tough for you, you bailed and left.”  
  
“fine! i’m sorry! and maybe i should’ve apologised sooner, but you weren’t exactly the easiest person to be around! you were such hard work—it didn’t matter what i did, fucking nothing made you happy! you always had a problem with everything! nothing was ever good enough! nobody ever felt bad enough for you! and i’m sorry about your mum and i’m sorry that your dad was never around! but that didn’t excuse you for being such a bitch all the time and it doesn’t now!”  
  
smack.  
  
rei’s hand, lightning-quick, strikes sayuri, hard, across the face. a raw red mark blooms across her skin. blood drips from her nose.  
sayuri clenches her jaw and stares defiantly at rei.  
  
“you deserved that. you fucking deserved that! where do you get off, calling me here and trying to act all high and mighty?! you’re years too late to play that card! you would be nothing without me! nobody would look twice at you if it weren’t for me! let’s not forget that you just disappeared with your new friends because it was too inconvenient for you to say anything to my face! let’s not forget that you couldn’t even text me and tell me!”  
  
“what difference would it have made?!” screams sayuri. her voice is hysterical and rei can hear her vocal cords trembling in her baby-soft throat.  
  
“you’re right. clearly you don’t feel any guilt regardless.”  
  
rei shoves past her and slams the door after her.  
  
sayuri drops to her knees and bursts into tears.  
  
rei went to class. sayuri never showed up.  
  
  
rei’s phone vibrates in her pocket and when she pulls it out, she’s mildly intrigued.  
it’s from sayuri, and all it says is; ‘i’m really sorry for everything.’  
and hours later, it turns out to be sayuri’s last ever text because instead of coming back downstairs to class, she went home and jumped from the balcony of her apartment building. the news tells her so. rei changes the channel.  
  
“well? do you think i’ll catch up with the witch?” rei says idly, tilting her soul gem in the static light cast by the advertisements. it looks murkier than usual.  
_what are you talking about?_ kyubey replies lightly, _there was no witch this time._  
  
  
nobody says anything to her face, but rei knows they’re talking about her.  
  
"weren’t they friends, though?"  
  
"yeah, like super close! why didn’t rei stop her?"  
  
"god, do you think rei even cared about her? i heard from kanako that rei was only tolerating sayuri to make herself look like a saint."  
  
there’s a phrase that rei knows; any publicity is good publicity. that’d once been a mantra, when she was desperate and willing to do just about anything for an ounce of attention. from sayuri. from her parents. but now that she’s on the receiving end of the glances and the whispers, the fact that everyone seems to think that their opinion counts for something, she’s not quite so sure of its truth.  
asuka is barely holding it together. she’s scrolling through photos of the four of them on her phone, forever frozen in some kind of happy stasis, and smearing her tears all over the screen.  
but it turns out that kanako is more vindictive than rei had ever realised. she’s amassed a small crowd of horrified classmates and she’s midway through telling them;  
“-and you should have seen how rei treated her that time! she ignored her the whole day, no matter what she did!”  
  
rei’s teeth grind painfully. her eye twitches manically. before she’s aware of it, she’s reached through a gap between shoulders and painfully yanked kanako by her collar through the crowd. a jolt of fear flashes through her face as rei winds her fist back and punches her square in the jaw with all the force she can muster.  
kanako goes limp in her hand, blood oozing from her mouth. she drops her callously on the floor. kanako is barely conscious, and rei leans down to get in her face. the crowd scatters, but is no less attentive. rei is bright with rage.  
  
“you’re gonna blame me for this, are you, skank? let’s not ignore how quickly you dropped sayuri for me. let’s not forget all the things you said about her and did to her!”  
  
kanako is unresponsive, so rei slaps her, hard, across the face.  
  
“that was a fucking question! i want an answer!”  
  
kanako’s head lolls back and the whites of her eyes are bulging in their sockets and someone grabs her arm before she can strike her again.  
  
“oh my god, look at what you’ve done to her!”  
  
“someone call an ambulance!”  
  
“what the fuck, rei!”  
  
all their voices build in an ugly cacophony. rei spots kyubey, curled up on a desk near the door and scrutinising her. her blood burns hot—too hot---as she shoves through the crowd. desperately wanting to tear a witch to tiny, insignificant pieces.  
  
  
labyrinth after labyrinth crumble and fall. witches flee, pulling their kaleidoscope worlds along by their corners. rei chokes on her own hyena laugh, tongue lolling out of her mouth.  
  
the best part of any hunt is the chase. to hell with the spoils.  
  
grief-seeds drop against the pavement as the mazes dissolve and slip through her fingers like seafoam. clink. clink. clink.  
  
she is already seeking the next witch, nose twitching against the air.  
  
kyubey sits back, and watches her body lurch forward, claws gleaming.  
  
he would advise her to cleanse her soul gem, but it is already far too late. with a toss of his head, he turns and pads away, searching for the next potential. rei rounds the corner, stumbles down an alley.  
  
_go home? can’t. ruined it._  
_call her? call who? she's dead. they wouldn't listen. i wouldn't listen._  
hot metal through butter flesh. eldritch death tolls sucked into the night sky.  
“i’ve found you.” rei howls, slash-wound grin torn across her face.  
it's fine. everyone is right here.  
  
her soul-gem shatters;  
  
her psychedelic nightmare springs out of her body. endless brightly-lit corridors that fade into pitch-black alleys burbles from her open mouth, forever locked in a silent scream. homey couches tucked amongst the graffiti. dirty brick and dirty floors and dirty family secrets. sayuri’s dead in the living room. _who’s sayuri?_  
  
finally, her pitiful yowling is silenced by the girl who vaults the kitchen counter, eyes mad and grin sick and blood flowing. she can scream louder and cut harder.  
she is the favourite.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! thanks for reading!   
> this is kind of like a companion piece to the gertrud one and was predominantly inspired by the bartels.


End file.
